there are dozens and dozens of ways to be a family ... Family tends to happen. — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract. — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along. — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
That's a sure way to tell about somebody--the way they play, or don't play, make-believe. — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
To be a witness means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
We do learn and develop when we are exposed to those who are greater than we are. Perhaps this is the chief… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Accepting that we are angry is a healthy and appropriate response as long as we don't get stuck in it. Acknowledging it… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
When a promise is broken, the promise still remains. In one way or another, we are all unfaithful to each other, and… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly. — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
As Emmanuel, Cardinal Suhard says, "To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up,… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
The rational intellect doesn't have a great deal to do with love, and it doesn't have a great deal to do with… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
I like to take the time out to listen to the trees, much in the same way that I listen to a… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
The prayer of words cannot be eliminated. And I must pray them daily, whether I feel like praying or not. Otherwise, when… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Stories have a richness that goes way beyond fact. My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
When we look at a painting, or hear a symphony, or read a book, and feel more Named, then, for us, that… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
My husband is my most ruthless critic... sometimes he will say, 'It's been said better before.' Of course it has. It's all… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
When the artist is truly the servant of the work, the work is better than the artist; Shakespeare knew how to listen… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
In the final exam in the Chaucer course we were asked why he used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
In your language you have a form of poetry called the sonnet…There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That’s… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
The shadows are deepening all around us. Now is the time when we must begin to see our world and ourselves in… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
The best way to guide children without coercion is to be ourselves. — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledging that they cannot take us all… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
A long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility, to friendship, to companionship. It is certainly not that passion disappears, but… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
If we accept that we have at least an iota of free will, we cannot throw it back the moment things go… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
It's a strange thing, how you can love somebody, how you can be all eaten up inside with needing them--and they simply… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
There is no way that you can read the entire Bible seriously and take every word literally. Contradictions start in the first… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“One of the hardest lessons I have to learn is how not to be judgmental about people who are judgmental. When I see how… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Inspiration more often comes during the work than before it, because the largest part of the job of an artist is to listen to… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Severe illness isolates those in close contact with it, because it inevitably narrows the focus of concern. To a certain extent this can lead… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.” — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“Instead of rejoicing in this glorious “impossible” which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his mighty… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
I have never lived before...Until this summer, I did not know what it was to be alive. — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“To love is to be vulnerable; and it is only in vulnerability and risk—not safety and security—that we overcome darkness.” — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“IT was the most horrible, the most repellent thing she had ever seen, far more nauseating then anything she had ever imagined with her… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
I feel as though I'm not breathing when I'm out of his presence. He's the oxygen in my air, the sun in my universe,… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
